The author of cookery classics like French Provincial Cooking, Elizabeth David found the literature of gastronomy to be as absorbing as the practical side, and produced such in-depth studies of food and culture as Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen (1970), English Bread and Yeast Cookery (for which she won the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year award, in 1977), and this book, published posthumously in 1994. David's social history of ice opens with Michel de Montaigne in 16th-century Italy, describing Florentine banquets that often ended with spectacular pyramids of ice and fruit, and goes on to trace the preserving, making, and using of snow and ice from ancient Mesopotamia to Paris café culture.

"An awe-inspiring feat of detective scholarship, the literally marvelous story of how human beings came to ingest lumps of flavored frozen matter for pleasure.... There is much, much more—about the making and breaking of reputations, the founding of Parisian café culture, the great and rivalrous confectioners of 18th- and 19th-century London, about Russian ice-cream (surprisingly superior) and Persian sherbets.... Sumptuous."—Independent on Sunday